want
to come back to White Sands, and her queer old father, after three years
of the life she would give her.

Old Man Shaw yielded, influenced thereto not at all by Mrs. Adair's
readily flowing tears, but greatly by his conviction that justice to
Sara demanded it. Sara herself did not want to go; she protested and
pleaded; but her father, having become convinced that it was best for
her to go, was inexorable. Everything, even her own feelings, must give
way to that. But she was to come back to him without let or hindrance
when her "schooling" was done. It was only on having this most clearly
understood that Sara would consent to go at all. Her last words, called
back to her father through her tears as she and her aunt drove down the
lane, were,

"I'll be back, daddy. In three years I'll be back. Don't cry, but just
look forward to that."

He had looked forward to it through the three long, lonely years that
followed, in all of which he never saw his darling. Half a continent
was between them and Mrs. Adair had vetoed vacation visits, under some
specious pretense. But every week brought its letter from Sara. Old
Man Shaw had every one of them, tied up with one of her old blue hair
ribbons, and kept in her mother's little rose-wood work-box in the
parlour. He spent every Sunday afternoon re-reading them, with her
photograph before him. He lived alone, refusing to be pestered with kind
help, but he kept the house in beautiful order.

"A better housekeeper than farmer," said White Sands people. He would
have nothing altered. When Sara came back she was not to be hurt by
changes. It never occurred to him that she might be changed herself.

And now those three interminable years were gone, and Sara was coming
home. She wrote him nothing of her aunt's pleadings and reproaches and
ready, futile tears; she wrote only that she would graduate in June and
start for home a week later. Thenceforth Old Man Shaw went about in a
state of beatitude, making ready for her homecoming. As he sat on the
bench in the sunshine, with the blue sea sparkling and crinkling down at
the foot of the green slope, he reflected with satisfaction that all
was in perfect order. There was nothing left to do save count the hours
until that beautiful, longed-for day after to-morrow. He gave himself
over to a reverie, as sweet as a day-dream in a haunted valley.

The red roses were out in bloom. Sara had always loved those red
roses--they were as vivid